"Human life seems at times a very flimsy affair, doesn't it?" she said, appealing to me again with her direct gaze.
"Yes, if one takes a cynical view of it," I answered.
She stood for a while pondering.
"Did I ever know that man?" she asked, looking up abruptly.
"You know best."
"Then it must have been very, very long ago."
A slight shiver ran through her frame. She shook my hand silently, and left the room.
One evening in the summer of 1870, just as the news from the Franco-Prussian war was arousing the enthusiasm of our Teutonic fellow-citizens, I was sauntering leisurely homeward, pondering with much satisfaction on the course history was taking. About half a mile from the Clark street bridge I found my progress checked by a crowd of men who had gathered on the sidewalk outside of a German saloon, and were evidently discussing some exciting topic. My journalistic instincts prompted me to stop and listen to the discussion.
"Poor fellow, I guess he is done for," some one was saying. "But they were both drunk; you couldn't expect anything else."
"Is any one hurt?" I asked, addressing my next neighbor in the crowd.